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Am I right you can't make a ritual permanent?

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Rosa

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« Reply #15 on: <04-02-17/2301:33> »
I don't think you should change the formula for rituals tbh, it would have rather large consequences for the setting. They have repeatedly stated that magic is rare, which the original formula reflects very well. Even megacorps have to pick and choose sites to ward in order to optimise the way they use their mages and otherwise make use of stuff like paracritters and biofiber. ..etc.

With your changed formula it becomes almost trivial to ward large places, which definitely does not reflect the setting, eventhough I know that some people seem to think that wards are so prevalent that every two bit mum and pop shop is warded, it doesn't reflect what has been stated about the rarity of magic.

Ultimately it's of course up to you.

Mirikon

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« Reply #16 on: <04-02-17/2344:33> »
Also, I may be wrong, but aren't attunement and those other rituals available to adepts permanent by default ? (I'm talking about some of the rituals described in the Street Grimoire). Or are these not really considered rituals for you ?
No. You have to learn the ritual to use it. Same goes with the ritual to improve your ally spirit, and so on. Yes, that means you have to pay for the initiation, and then pay to know the ritual, and then pay to perform the ritual.
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Senko

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« Reply #17 on: <04-03-17/0313:36> »
I don't think you should change the formula for rituals tbh, it would have rather large consequences for the setting. They have repeatedly stated that magic is rare, which the original formula reflects very well. Even megacorps have to pick and choose sites to ward in order to optimise the way they use their mages and otherwise make use of stuff like paracritters and biofiber. ..etc.

With your changed formula it becomes almost trivial to ward large places, which definitely does not reflect the setting, eventhough I know that some people seem to think that wards are so prevalent that every two bit mum and pop shop is warded, it doesn't reflect what has been stated about the rarity of magic.

Ultimately it's of course up to you.

Just to clarify here I'm not talking about an across the board ritual change just the wards spefically, since I've gotten my answer to the original question. With regard to your comment about the ease of warding you may well be right that this makes warding larger areas to easy. The problem is that as written to me it feels too hard to ward a large area. Ease of warding multiple mum and pop stores is sort of a different issue to that. That is . . .

Issue 1
Size of warding area, to ward a room/small area is fairly easy but to ward larger ones becomes steadily more and more impossible e.g. the corporate headquarters of a AAA corp would need thousands of mages working together. This is the one I'm looking at.

Issue 2
Number of wardings, this is the one I think you're raising (correct me if I'm wrong). The way I see it the current warding rules actually encourage this since warding a single 8 story building would need hundreds of mages working together to protect it. However warding 800 single mum and pop stores can be done by a single mage working alone (3 magic rating can ward 150 cubic meters which is larger than most small shop fronts). Which would result in lots of smaller wards scattered around since NPC's don't need to pay the karma costs that are meant to balance things for players if you're making it permanent.

What I'd like to see is what I'm trying to adjust the warding spell to do where more mages allow the larger buildings we have today to be warded in its entireity without affecting the ease of creating multiple ones (which may well need its own adjustment down). I may have gone to far but my proposed change to the warding rule would allow a smaller number of mages to ward a building/complex but not make it easier to ward say 5 different buildings all around the city, at least not directly.
« Last Edit: <04-03-17/0315:13> by Senko »

Mirikon

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« Reply #18 on: <04-03-17/0925:35> »
Regarding wards:

AFAIK, selling warding services for an office or a small shop is one of the bread and butter things for a mage who isn't on the corporate payroll and isn't an active runner to do for steady income. Not permanent wards, but the ones that wear off, so you have to keep selling the service, just like the pest control company comes every month.

Warding an entire skyscraper is not commonly done, for the reasons Senko mentioned, but also because it would be a royal pain in the ass to any Awakened who worked there (including Corpsec). However, sensitive parts of the building probably would be warded, especially things like the main security center, high security or black research labs, and the executive floors. For instance, I believe one of the older books mentions that the top five floors of the Aztechnology pyramid in seattle has a heavy ward on it.
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Beta

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« Reply #19 on: <04-03-17/0941:00> »
Of course, there is no reason that the Mega couldn’t cover their HQ using a hodgepodge of 800 smaller wards :-)  In fact, in some ways that is stronger because an astral entity would have to get through many wards, not just one, and so would be more apt to get caught (and couldn’t flee quickly at all if having to take time to work through many layers of defense on the way out).

Although, given that wards don’t have a projection factor, i.e. you have to have a lodge (permanent or temporary) where you are creating it, I honestly doubt that many would include the entire building in wards.  I’m not sure what RAW intends about ability to shape wards, but I tend to assume that they don’t have to be a cube and can be at least somewhat rectangular, so there is some ability to be fairly clever about where you place a limited number of wards to get best effect.
 
My theory is that buildings will tend to ward entrances (and newer buildings will be structured to funnel people through relatively few areas, to make it easier to catch it all in one to a few wards), the facilities of their security teams, executive office areas, and certain other high security areas (important research labs, for instance).  Larger / richer/ more important / more vain places will also put wards around certain conference rooms, executive washrooms, and key chokepoints (astral entities can always work around a warded corridor/staircase, but a mage with a flock of spirits and a bunch of foci, or a dual-natured being, can’t so easily do this). 

And then there are maybe a few others for less obvious reasons.  A perk for certain jobs is having a desk in a warded area, giving you more of an illusion of privacy.  It is fun / possibly smart to ward a completely boring area, so that astral intruders can’t assume that all warded areas are important!   And the placement of other wards may actually fully block off an area that is not actually warded (you just can’t get there without going through a ward).

Senko

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« Reply #20 on: <04-03-17/1845:14> »
I admit this came up when I was trying to adjust wards to form my own insect repelling ward (as in the cockroach not spirits) and it occured to me if you don't cover the building a spirit could slip in, hide from astral patrols as best it could then kill or try to kill a high level CEO when he went to the bathroom. Whereas if you covered the entire building in a force 2/3 ward it wouldn't stop anything determined but would alert you to their arrival while the more secure areas would have more powerful wards on them inside the previous one.

As for corpsec you can make it so certain mages are unaffected by wards (the default is those invovled in teh ritual but I vaguely recall some ability to add/remove if needed thought that may have been a house rule).

Rosa

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« Reply #21 on: <04-03-17/2326:28> »
The 4th edition magic book had quite a few alternatives to wards such as awakened ivy, fab bacteria, glomoss....etc. In my eyes those are the corporate solutions to the problem with the need for astral security and the scarcity of mages as well as cost considerations.

Sadly another thing that didn't make it into 5th edition, at least I don't recall having seen it.

Senko

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« Reply #22 on: <04-04-17/0524:33> »
The 4th edition magic book had quite a few alternatives to wards such as awakened ivy, fab bacteria, glomoss....etc. In my eyes those are the corporate solutions to the problem with the need for astral security and the scarcity of mages as well as cost considerations.

Sadly another thing that didn't make it into 5th edition, at least I don't recall having seen it.

Hmmm interesting I may need to try and track down the 4th ed magic book. Anything to keep out the common vermin (cockroaches, ants, spiders, flies, mice, rats)?

Rosa

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« Reply #23 on: <04-04-17/1131:50> »
Why look for complex magical solutions to something that have tonnes of mundane solutions  ( in regard to vermin protection )?

If you need a magical solution to vermin issues I guess you could "invent" a ward that also repels vermin, I would make the anchoring metamagic a requirement for making such a ward though as you're imbedding another magical function into an astral construct, but such a ward would be even harder to get constructed in any meaningful numbers as you require an initiate to do it. Again mundane solutions much simpler and cost effective. I suppose you could invent your own awakened plant or plant based manatech with that added function, some insect eating plant that also doubles as astral barriers if they are dual natured.

Senko

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« Reply #24 on: <04-04-17/1909:25> »
Why look for complex magical solutions to something that have tonnes of mundane solutions  ( in regard to vermin protection )?

If you need a magical solution to vermin issues I guess you could "invent" a ward that also repels vermin, I would make the anchoring metamagic a requirement for making such a ward though as you're imbedding another magical function into an astral construct, but such a ward would be even harder to get constructed in any meaningful numbers as you require an initiate to do it. Again mundane solutions much simpler and cost effective. I suppose you could invent your own awakened plant or plant based manatech with that added function, some insect eating plant that also doubles as astral barriers if they are dual natured.

I thought anchoring metamagic was a requirement for wards anyway, I'll need to check that then.
Its two different things really the ward to repel vermin I was working on really only needs to cover an apartment which even the current ward formula does and which I'd be using since for that ward all you really need to cover is the ground floor to prevent them getting into an office building.
The variations to cover a larger area are intended for the normal ward spell only and resulted from my realizing it was pretty much impossible to ward nearly any existing office building much less the shadowrun megascrapers/archologies in their entireity without more casters than makes sense in a magic is still fairly rare setting.

As for why I want a magical solution honestly I just feel in this case its better than the mundane ones. No toxic chemicals, no little crack's/vents hidden deep in the construction you can't access (without shadowrun drones), chemicals need to be reapplied every 6 months this can be permanent, if written so it merely gives them a sense of danger rather than a physical barrier they'll even carry their eggs out with them (well ants will) and so on.
Although I admit before I start on this I had the cockakitty a little robotic kitten that looks cute and hunts cockroaches at night. The deluxe version had reuthium coating so they wouldn't see it coming.

Rosa

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« Reply #25 on: <04-04-17/2158:08> »
Anchoring isn't a requirement for normal wards, but the ritual is an anchored ritual, that just means that it has to be tied to something physical like a wall and that the anchor can't be moved relative to the Gaia sphere or the ward collapses, so no warding a car for example unless you want it to be stationary.

There's a number of specialty wards in street magic that does require knowledge of various metamagic for some of them.

In regards to the magical solution to the vermin issue, why not just research a "Repel Vermin spell" cast it at a high enough force that it basically covers the entire apartment and then quicken it?

Senko

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« Reply #26 on: <04-05-17/0133:31> »
I see.

A quickened spell would work just as well really and originally I put together one for that just seems like ritual ward is better to adapt to me now. Covers an area, just substitude a few words and it works.